


a dimming star

by hydrospanners



Series: renegade [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Drabble, Gen, Grief, Nirea Velaran
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 04:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19077367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: Nirea Velaran grapples with her losses on the way to a new life and an old war.





	a dimming star

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of a retread of ground I touched on in [_the shape of things to come_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14326899) but I'm facing a personal loss right now and it helped me to write this. This is set maybe a day after that fic.

> _turhaya_ : old corellian for 'bright star'

 

 

Rea braids her hair.

 

 _Over, under, through._ Her fingers are clumsy with inexperience. _Over, under, through._ Rhese is supposed to do this for her. Rhese or Liss or Ranna. Sometimes Deerin.

 

 _Deerin_.

 

His blood is dried in the tangles of her hair. She can feel it, tacky and stiff beneath her fingers. She still thinks she sees it sometimes, crusted in the beds of her nails and the creases of her knuckles.

 

 _Over, under, through._ Wisps of hair slip from the curve of every loop she makes. They’re all irregular, too fat or too thin or too loose or too tight. _Over, under, through._ A sloppy braid isn’t the kind of thing she would normally care about, but what else does she have now?

 

Rea stares at the clean, blank walls of her new prison. At the neatly pressed robes lying folded and untouched on the desk. At the sleek, unadorned hilt of the lightsaber lying next to them.

 

This is her life now. _Over, under, through._ Empty and clean. _Over, under, through._ Straight lines and silence. _Over, under, through._

 

The quiet bothers her the most. The stillness. The hyperdrive she can’t hear humming and the vibrations she can’t feel in the plating beneath her feet. The yawning, hollow void where warm voices and laughter ought to be.

 

 _Deerin_ . Rea sees his face so clearly in her memory, swollen and red, battered almost beyond recognition. Her hand tingles with memory of his bones breaking beneath it; her ears ring with the dull crunching sound. _Over, under, through_.

 

Why did he do it? When had his love turned to hate? Why hadn’t she noticed? Had he just hated them all along? Was none of it ever real?

 

_Over, under, through._

 

She tries to feel sorry for what she did, but she can’t. _Over, under, through_. She doesn’t feel angry anymore either. _Over, under, through_. She doesn’t feel anything at all.

 

A perfect Jedi already.

 

She hopes it’s everything Rhese dreamed it would be. She hopes he’s sleeping peacefully in a little cot with scratchy sheets at some enclave far away from anywhere that matters. She hopes he’s healing and learning and reading histories and meditating in waterfalls. She hopes he’s safe. She hopes he’s happy.

 

Marefka will only say that he isn’t suited for the front lines. That he isn’t like her.

 

Rea has never been more grateful for that.

 

She twists the final knot in the braid— _over, under, through_ —pinching the frayed ends between her fingers. She looks at herself in the small mirror. At the fading bruises on her face and wrists, at the places where she can still feel how the blood had gathered at her temple, at the corners of her mouth. At the sharp edge of her father’s cheekbones and the hard line of his jaw. At the cool blue of her mother’s eyes. At the braid of long, dark hair swept over her shoulder just like Ranna’s.

 

Like Ranna’s _used_ to be.

 

It’s funny how nothing can feel like so much something. How loud the silence can be in the space where a voice is supposed to go. _Take care of your brother, Turhaya. You’re all he’s got_.

 

Rea tugs the loops of the braids loose and starts again.

 

_Over, under, through._


End file.
